Kathy Knowlton and Stephen Feldman are the new owners of Page 2 Books in Burien, Wash. The Seattle Times reported that when longtime customer Feldman mentioned to now former owner Jenny Cole that he had fantasized about owning a bookstore, Cole had replied, "Well, you can just buy everything here and it's yours." Although she had been thinking about selling Page 2, she hadn't seriously pursued any potential buyers until then.
Feldman was surprised, though he brought the prospect of buying Page 2 home to his wife, Kathy Knowlton, "with the expectation that she would say, 'What, are you crazy?' " he recalled.
Confirming that in their marriage, "I'm in charge of throwing the cold water" on Feldman's big ideas, Knowlton said that when she heard the concept of buying her beloved neighborhood bookstore, "I never threw it."
In her decade-long tenure as owner of Page 2 Books, Cole "has re-imagined the bookstore from the ground up. She transitioned it from the used bookstore it had been since its founding in 1989 to a mix of new and used books, and fostered a vibrant book club program," the Times wrote.
Feldman and Knowlton have no previous bookselling experience, but they did have one key requirement during the negotiation process. "One of the things that attracted us to the place are the people," Knowlton said. "The staff are a treasure, and we aren't really in a position to run it day-to-day." Early in the process of buying the bookstore, Feldman told Anna Griffiths, who has been manager at Page 2 for the past year, "If you don't come with it, we're not buying it." Griffiths stayed, as did all five of Page 2's booksellers when the ownership transitioned over Easter weekend.
No immediate changes are planned for the bookstore, though in the future Page 2 might explore some of Griffiths's ideas, like a "Page 2 Go Books" van that could bring the store on the road to community events. For now, however, the shop is carrying on with one major edict in mind: "The people who work here make the difference," Feldman said. "Otherwise, it's just another bookstore."
In a Facebook post introducing themselves earlier this month, the new owners noted: "Thank you, Jenny, for making such a success out of Burien's Page 2 Books! We hope to continue that tradition. In fact, continuity is the key plan so far (like you back in the day we have no prior retail experience--that's good, right?)."